His Father's Son
by RainbowRomeo
Summary: We often hide the real reason why we do things the way we do. Dr Cox does, too. for example why he was scared of being a father to Jack. Or why he did not want JD to see some kind of father figure in him.


**HIS FATHER'S SON**

_"Maybe I'm just crazy or the devil got inside  
But either way my soul is gone, And I'll end this all tonight'  
The one hand throws the whiskey, and the other throws the gun  
As he cries out to the heavens  
I am not my father's son"_

I had not seen Dr Cox since yesterday. He had told me and Turk off after we had been stupid enough to come to work in an everything but actually fit to do work state. The problem with being lectured by Dr Cox is that most of the time you can already guess what he is going to say and then still having to listen to it is pure torture, because you already feel like complete and utter shit.

However, this is what gets me to actually think about what is going on and learn from it. This time, Turk and I had decided that there was no way we could go to the wedding with Spence, especially since he himself had told us to stop looking for someone other than ourselves to blame. I was almost happy he was not living close, listening to Dr Cox and Spence had been terrifying.

Now that I had gotten rid of my guilty conscience it was time to find Dr Cox. There were a lot of things to say. For example, to say I was sorry for not telling him that Jack was his son, his _biological_ son.

I still cannot believe how no one had noticed that! Jack looked like a little Dr Cox and I was actually scared whenever the boy opened his eyes, because they were just as crazy as Dr Cox's.

I wonder if he had just not wanted to get his hopes up. Maybe he had wanted to be the father, but had not wanted to hope for something that was probably not going to happen. Normally Dr Cox knew everything, there had to be a reason why he had not found out about Jack being his son.

Maybe I could get it out of him? Yeah, I was going to try the best puppy dog eyes I could muster and then use the not-so-secret secret weapon. Tell him how right he had been about scolding Turk and I and how great he was to do everything he did. I bet he was not going to be able to keep _anything _from me like that.

The surprise was that it seemed I did not need to use either at first.

I found Dr Cox in an empty patient's room. Nurse Roberts told me to be careful, because Jordan had supposedly torn him to pieces in there and then left him to tear the room or anyone in it to pieces in return.

Quietly knocking on the half open door I stepped in, ready to duck from flying chairs or run up to him to keep him from jumping out of the window. But instead I saw him sitting there. Just… sitting.

Dr Cox did not wear any of the facial expressions I had expected him to. No "I'm brooding over ways to kill Jordan and Newbie at the same time"-face, no "Oh my God, I'm a father!"-face. Actually he was not really showing off anything of what was going on in his mind and that meant it was serious.

He could show fake emotions, like the rage of wanting to kill someone. But whenever his face was blank, real feelings were at stake.

I closed the door behind me, contemplating for a moment, if I should have hung the "Do not disturb" sign on the outer door handle. I decided not to. Who knew if maybe I would need somebody's help? If Dr Cox was anything he was unpredictable, completely unpredictable.

Slowly I stepped up to him and sat down beside him on the bed. I searched my brain for anything to say, but came up with nothing and at the same time with the best thing to do for Dr Cox. Say nothing and wait for him.

So we sat there in silence. I listened to his even breath, making out a few sighs, maybe just deeper breaths. For some weird reason I felt completely at ease in that situation. Sure, I wanted to talk, wanted him to open up, wanted to hug him, but just sitting there was okay as well. It felt like he was okay with me being there, too.

"You know, I wasn't even mad at Jordan", Dr Cox spoke up after what felt to me like seconds and hours at the same time. It surprised me, how loud his voice was due to the empty room when it sounded thin as it did.

"No?", I replied quietly.

"No, I was scared. In fact I was freaking out all day, because I'm quite confident that I'm going to be an absolutely horrible father", he explained looking at the wall in front of us, probably not even seeing the disgusting puke stain that Janitor still refused to paint over.

For a moment I wondered if he was aware of me next to him. It sounded like he was talking to himself even when addressing me directly.

"You? Come on, you're going to be a very… a great father! You know, like last night when you totally kicked our asses, because we deserved it? Dr Cox, you are always there when we need you, I think you have this fathering thing down", I tried a little bit of the not-so-secret secret weapon.

It scared me how vulnerable he looked. It was not like him at all and I wanted him to get his act together and be strong again and for that he needed his ego stroked, needed to be told how great he was.

And you know, I was not even lying, because I knew that someone who managed to become my hero in no time would be every little kid's hero, especially when that someone was their Dad.

We went back to silence after that short dialogue and this time we stayed silent for an even longer time, so it was more of a surprise when he talked again. Dr. Cox's voice shocked me and I immediately felt guilty for wanting him to be strong for me again. He sounded absolutely terrified, scared to his core.

"I was five when Paige was born. It took three weeks until they brought her home and that was were I first saw her. But I couldn't look at her when my parents held her, I couldn't stand to see that baby in his arms. His arms, his hands that were… I feared the worst and I hoped and prayed for two weeks that it wouldn't come to that. But it did."

I was not able to comprehend the fact that Dr Cox was opening up to me. There was no joy over hearing him confide in me, I was feeling sick, I was afraid. I did not even want to hug him any longer, because that would have made it real, would have proved that it was an actual person's past I was listening to.

"She was five weeks old and crying. It was the first time he was home alone with her and I. Paige just wouldn't stop crying and he wouldn't stop shouting at me to make her stop. Make her stop _somehow_. In the end he took one of her diapers, ripped it to shreds and stuffed the pieces into her mouth." I gasped. "She… stopped crying. And breathing. He went out after kicking me in the head to keep me from her crib. I ran to the neighbors and told what had happened. If my neighbors' son wouldn't have been a doctor and visiting at that time, Paige would have died being only five weeks old."

Strange as it was, I could not stop focusing on the word "doctor". That man had to have been my hero's hero, that man had maybe been the reason for Dr Cox to study medicine, to become a doctor himself.

"Yes, Newbie, I became a doctor because of that guy", Dr Cox answered my thoughts and I felt like I was supposed to smile, for him knowing me like that and all, only I could not do that either.

My mentor had just told me what was probably the most horrible story I knew to be true. Yes, I had experienced cases of abusive parents myself, but never had I heard about people hurting kids as small as Dr Cox's sister had been. I wondered if Paige knew about that, if anyone for that matter knew that story.

And I feared, I knew the answer to that.

"You think you're going to be a bad father, because of how you have been brought up?", I made myself ask, even though I was not really feeling like returning to that topic.

I wanted to ask him about other times, about how it had started, when it had ended, the worst times it had happened. I wanted him to _talk _about it, because I feared that even with having his personal shrink, this was most likely something he had not talked about in details. Everyone knew Dr Cox had had a tough childhood, but I had pictured it quite different than this.

"Look at yourself, your father was a loser, you are a loser. Barbie's mother is a neurotic nutcase, she is a neurotic nutcase. We can fight to not become our parents, but Newbie…" He turned his head to look at me. "…the genes always win in the end."

Dr Cox looked defeated. Like he had fought against his genes for a long time and had now, because of Jack, admitted defeat.

"I will not bring anything positive into my son's life, I won't be the perfect Dad he deserves. I will… hurt him and I know that. As long as I thought he was somebody else's kid, I was planning on abandoning Jordan and him, I was going to send them to her mother, tell Jordan we weren't working out and that I wanted her to leave. What am I supposed to do now? Somebody else's kid I can send away with people understanding why, but my own son?", he asked and strangely, I thought that he really was asking me, wanting me to answer his questions, because his gaze was directed to me still.

I tried to push away the fact that the thought of me preparing myself to stop him from jumping out of the window had not been so far fetched. The way he was talking, how he searched for _any_ clue how to react to the news… He looked at me, completely at loss, utterly helpless.

I probably did not look any different and with a sigh, which sounded too much like he had proven his point by me not knowing an answer, he averted his gaze. Fortunately, that sparked an idea in my head.

"You know, Jordan left Jack with me last week", I started, not wanting to say any of this, but knowing I had to. "We had that new coma patient, the one that seemed to wake up all the time, but it turned out that were only some weird side effects to one of the drugs? Anyway, I had been paged to get to her room as quickly as possible, for she had opened her eyes again. I had to leave Jack, I wasn't able to wait to get an elevator empty enough to get his pushchair in. I told Carla to watch him, but it turned out, she hadn't been listening and left him on his own. When I got back, Janitor had him, you know…"

And there it was. Dr Cox looking at me, the crazy eyes, his face blank, but his eyes narrowed and that vein on his forehead? It was pulsing with rage!

"He'd had Jack on his arm by the counter with an assembly of cleaning products in front of him and whenever Jack did something that looked like he pointed at one of the bottles in front of him, he let him take a sip. The Todd and a few other surgeons where betting, which product made him cry the hardest, turns out it was the window cleaner and it hurt so bad that Jack cried as soon as someone just touched his lips. But the worst was that…"

Mission accomplished. Dr Cox had grabbed me and I found myself pressed against the dried old puke stain on the wall, my back hurting from how fast and hard my mentor had thrown me. He glared directly into my eyes and I felt a smile creep up onto my lips, because one, I was enjoying the closeness, and two, I had proven my own point.

Even though Dr Cox knew that I was lying, the mere picture of anyone hurting his son was enough to send him into killing mood. He cared so much about the kid, cared especially about no one hurting him in a physical way, because he knew. He knew what it did to you, when you had to go through pain like that.

"You know, you're going to be a very scary Dad", I smiled and slowly lifted my hands to gently place them onto his forearms, making no move to remove his hands from my chest.

"You're going to be that kind of Dad who doesn't want his kid to do anything, who will fight with the mother to let the kid join Little League for months and will then admit defeat at looking at the kid's puppy dog eyes, only to lurk in the shadows to watch each and every practise, making sure nobody would ever hurt his kid. Jack will despise you once he's old enough, he will slam the door of his room behind him and at the same time smile when he thinks about how badly you just want to always be there for him."

Dr Cox closed his eyes while sucking in a deep, deep breath, slowly letting the air out of his lungs to brush against my skin. His eyes were still closed when he leaned forward and touched his forehead to mine. He looked exhausted and I felt badly sorry for only caring about my problems with Spence for the whole day.

It took some time, but eventually I managed to lay my hands onto his shoulderblades and pull him closer. To my surprise he did not resist the slightest bit. I got the hug I had dreamed about and only thought about it this way after a few hours. In that moment the only thing I could think about was helping Dr Cox, being there for him exactly how he wanted me to.

"Don't worry about hurting Jack. You love him and have loved him too much already to ever, ever, _ever_ lay a finger on him", I whispered and felt how Dr Cox held me closer at hearing my words. His hands reached the small of my back and locked me into his arms, showing me I was not going to be let go until he said so. Not that I minded.

"You do know I didn't want you to look at me as a father figure, because you do nothing but make me mad and furious and hostile and I didn't want to lash out at you as soon as I started thinking of you as someone depending on me like I did on my father. You know that, don't you?", Dr Cox asked quietly, his voice back to normal, just a tone softer than I was used to.

"Yes, I know that. I understand."

I smiled shyly as he put a small distance between us to look at me. Being this close and looking at him? I blushed.

"You'll be there, will you? To lurk in the shadows with me?"

_"And I've bundled up all these fears inside  
And I've bottled up all of this pain  
And no one or nothing can take this away  
But I won't let it happen again  
Never again"_

**End.**

© 2009 by rainbow_romeo

_(Lyrics: 3 Doors Down – Father's son)_


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